{"id":204,"date":"2009-05-10T14:13:20","date_gmt":"2009-05-10T18:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/?p=204"},"modified":"2009-05-10T14:13:20","modified_gmt":"2009-05-10T18:13:20","slug":"swedish-adjectives-following-a-possessive-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/swedish-adjectives-following-a-possessive-word\/","title":{"rendered":"Swedish Adjectives &#8211; following a possessive word"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>\u201cI hate those Swedish adjectives,\u201d<\/em> my friend proclaimed, <em>\u201cthey make no sense!\u201d<\/em><br \/>\nMy friend has been studying Swedish for a few weeks already, and as she says, it\u2019s been a slow going, painful process. The fact that she\u2019s doing it mostly by herself, with only her Swedish boyfriend as a reluctant teacher, outside of Sweden, is not helping her efforts either.<\/p>\n<p>This time it was the adjectives that incurred her wrath. She explained the problem to me, because apparently her Swedish guy was no help.<br \/>\nI know that she expected a clear, logical answer to her grammar question from me, but unfortunately, I had to disappoint her. All I could say was \u201cwell\u2026 that\u2019s how it is in Swedish.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And what made her so upset? This goofy, little thing that Swedish adjectives do when they\u2019re stuck between a possessive word and a noun.<\/p>\n<p>Take a look:<br \/>\nWe say \u2013 <strong>min bil<\/strong> (my car) and <strong>ny bil<\/strong> (a new car), right?<br \/>\nSo why do we get this when we put it all together?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>min ny<span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">a<\/span> bil<\/strong> \u2013 my new car<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>See what happened?<br \/>\nThe adjective changes its form and gets the definite ending <strong>\u2013a<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Why does it happen? I don\u2019t know. It just does.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s a few more examples:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>ditt hus<\/strong> \u2013 your house<\/li>\n<li><strong>stort hus<\/strong> \u2013 a big house<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>but:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>ditt stor<span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">a<\/span> hus<\/strong> &#8211; your big house<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It doesn\u2019t matter if the possessive word is a pronoun or a noun. The adjective still changes.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>pojkens mormor<\/strong> \u2013 boy\u2019s grandmother<\/li>\n<li><strong>fattig mormor<\/strong> \u2013 poor grandmother<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>but:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>pojkens fattig<span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">a<\/span> mormor<\/strong> \u2013 boy\u2019s poor grandmother<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, in conclusion:<br \/>\n1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If you have an adjective following a possessive word and preceding a noun, the adjective must be in the definite form ending in \u2013a.<br \/>\n2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There\u2019s no other way but to learn and remember this rule.<br \/>\n3.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No need to get upset about it.<br \/>\n4.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Because really, this is one of the easier quirks of Swedish grammar.<\/p>\n<p>See? It wasn&#8217;t that difficult after all. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cI hate those Swedish adjectives,\u201d my friend proclaimed, \u201cthey make no sense!\u201d My friend has been studying Swedish for a few weeks already, and as she says, it\u2019s been a slow going, painful process. The fact that she\u2019s doing it mostly by herself, with only her Swedish boyfriend as a reluctant teacher, outside of Sweden&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/swedish-adjectives-following-a-possessive-word\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1875,3154,3007,3351,3359],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-grammar","tag-adjective","tag-definite-form","tag-noun","tag-possessive","tag-pronoun"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}